Something to readGetting ahead
You and your research
A long read of a 1986 talk on why a few people do important work and others don't
Why it’s worth your time
It's easy to spend a year working hard on things that won't matter much to anyone, including you. Richard Hamming, a mathematician who spent thirty years at Bell Labs, gave this talk on what he noticed about the people around him who did significant work, and it's blunt, funny and full of habits you can test at any desk. He was talking to scientists, and much of it carries over to other kinds of work.
Find the important problems, then aim at one
The essay · 60 min · Free
Opens their site. We don’t copy it here; we’d rather they get the read.
- Read the talk.
It runs long with the questions afterwards, so start with the formal talk. Look for the lunch-table story, where he asks a table of chemists what the important problems in their field are, and what he says about keeping Friday afternoons for big questions. Look too for the section on selling your work and his stories about using the system instead of fighting it.
- List the important problems around you.
Take an hour this Friday. Write down three or four problems that matter most to your team or your field and that someone could make real progress on. Next to this week's work, note which of them it moves, if any. Take one to your manager as a question about their goals: which of these matters most to you this quarter?
Good moments for this: on a Friday afternoonwhen the weeks feel busy but go nowherebefore choosing your next project
Keep going with Truest
Small actions add up. Truest helps you find the next thing worth doing, make the space to do it, and keep a record of your progress. It’s a private place to work on your career, and it’s yours, not your employer’s.
- It actually happensWe’ll put it on your calendar and remind you before it starts.
- Every week it happens countsEach week you do it shows on your record, next to what you said matters.
- It’s yours to keepEach thing you do is saved to your private record, there when your next review or job search comes around.
Anything else we can help you with this week?
Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
He says a problem matters because there's a reasonable way in, not because the payoff would be huge. At work that rules out the grand fix nobody can start on, and points toward the important thing you could make a dent in this quarter.
What might make this harder
Make the list anyway, then ask your manager which of those problems your current work could feed. Hamming describes reshaping an assigned job slightly so it served a bigger question.
Questions people ask
What is Richard Hamming's You and Your Research about?
It's a transcript of a 1986 talk by Hamming, who had spent thirty years at Bell Labs, on why a few scientists do significant work while many are forgotten. Drawing on the colleagues he watched, he points to working on important problems, courage, commitment, keeping your door open and selling your work.
What does Hamming mean by important problems?
Problems that matter and that you have a reasonable way to attack. He notes that nobody at Bell Labs worked on time travel or antigravity, because there was no way in, not because they wouldn't matter.
How do I find important work to do at my job?
Ask the people around you what the most important problems in their area are, then ask which of them your work could feed. Hamming set aside Friday afternoons for this kind of thinking.
What it says, and how it holds up
Hamming's central question is easy to go years without asking out loud: which problems in my field matter most, and why am I not working on one of them? He tells how he put it to a lunch table of chemists at Bell Labs and wasn't welcome back, and how one of them stopped him months later to say it had nagged at him all summer. The question can sting because it lines up what you believe matters against what you spent the week doing.
He gave the talk in 1986 to a packed room at Bell Communications Research, after thirty years at Bell Labs, and J. F. Kaiser of Bellcore transcribed it, questions and all. He draws on people like Claude Shannon and John Tukey, and on his own habits: Friday afternoons kept for big questions, and a one-off job reworked so others could build on it. The section that maps most directly onto an ordinary job is about selling. He finds it distasteful and insists on it anyway, splitting it into writing clearly, giving prepared talks, and speaking up in the meeting while the decision is still open, instead of filing a memo weeks later. Getting good work noticed is, in his telling, a second job alongside doing it.
He's open about what his approach cost. He admits he sometimes neglected his wife to study and says great work means living with stress. His advice on dressing to fit the people you need help from is about avoiding a small, steady cost over a career: in his story, appearing to conform got him better service. One piece of advice about the system has a sharp edge: if you want a yes, don't ask, just present the finished thing. A lab that rewards results suits that move, while a regulated or high-trust team may punish it, since asking first is part of the work there. On a team like that, the same energy is better spent making the case early, which is the selling he argues for anyway.
You might like
More in Getting ahead
See allRead this alongside your role page
Tell Truest what you’re dealing with
We read every one, and we write guides for the things that come up most. Leave your email if you’d like to hear when we do.
Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.